


Love at First Disaster

by GemmaRose



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Others are mentioned but those are the ones with speaking lines, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 17:57:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4676009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GemmaRose/pseuds/GemmaRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sanji had always thought that the disaster of meeting his soulmate would be something like accidentally spilling another table’s meal on her, or something to that effect. Zoro had never given it much thought at all. Sometimes disaster disguises itself as opportunity, and it takes a bit of skull-knocking for those afflicted to realise what happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Definitely inspired by [this tumblr post](http://pretzel-log1c.tumblr.com/post/122953788251).

Sanji sat carefully on somebody’s porch steps, making sure not to jostle his ribs. It really was something like a miracle that he hadn’t punctured a lung during that fight with Kuurobi. Usopp flopped down on the steps at his side, and Sanji gave the sniper a grin which wasn’t returned.

“Have I told you about the day I met Kaya?” he said without preamble.

“No?” Sanji frowned. “Who’s Kaya?”

“Her parents had died not too long ago, so I went to see if I could cheer her up.” Usopp ignored the question, launching right into his story. “I had to pass through a terrible wall of thorn bushes, with spikes as long as my arm and sharper than knives, and when I finally arrived I had to scale a tree a hundred feet to reach the first branch.”

Sanji raised an eyebrow. That seemed unlikely, but he said nothing.

“That branch happened to be just outside her window, and I found it open. But the moment she leaned out the window to greet me, a mighty gale knocked me from my perch!” he gestured wildly with his arms, and Sanji found himself nodding along. “I made to catch myself on her windowsill, but reached too far and caught the front of her shirt instead. It tore, and I fell all the way to the ground.”

“And you survived that?” Sanji aimed for a skeptical tone, but it came out closer to wondering. For all his boasting, Usopp really did have a knack for storytelling.

“Of course!” the sniper laughed “The Great Captain Usopp can survive anything! I immediately scaled the tree to return the front of her blouse, and from there, history.” he waved his hands vaguely, a dumb grin on his face.

“So Kaya is your soulmate?” Sanji stretched one of his legs out, ankle resting on the edge of the lowest step.

“Yeah.” Usopp’s lovestruck grin remained firmly in place, and his eyes had a look that said loud and clear he wasn’t seeing the party going on in front of them. “It took me a while to realize it though.”

“You fell out of a tree and ripped her shirt.” Sanji pointed out, his tone hitting much closer to skepticism this time.

“Well, that hardly seemed like a disaster.” Usopp shrugged, drawing one knee to his chest and hugging it there. “My mom was dead, and so were both her parents.”

“I’m sorry.” Sanji said after a moment of heavy silence. He leaned back slowly, resting his weight on his arms, and looked up at the starry sky. “I don’t remember my mom very well, but I still miss her.”

“That’s not the point.” Usopp shook his head, and Sanji raised an eyebrow at him.

“Then what is?”

“I know a disaster when I see one. I never told Kaya, because I didn’t want her butler to think I was taking advantage of her.”

“That’s stupid.” Sanji frowned.

“I don’t want you to miss your disaster because you got caught up in Luffy’s.” Usopp cut off the rest of Sanji’s chiding, and the cook blinked a few times before he could come up with an adequate response.

“What?”

Okay, so as far as responses went it was pretty shitty, but it got the point across.

“From what Zoro and Nami have told me, Luffy is pretty much a perpetual disaster. But what I saw at the Baratie, that was something else.”

“Nami being pulled back to Arlong _was_ a disaster.” he mused. If their beautiful navigator was his soulmate, then the destruction of Zeff’s restaurant was a perfectly acceptable consequence.

Usopp slapped him on the back of the head. “No, you asshole.”

Sanji glared at him, ignoring the twinge of his ribs as he twisted to do so.

“Are you seriously so dense you can’t remember who else had a disaster the day we met?”

“Luffy?” the chef ventured hesitantly. Getting beaten up by Krieg surely counted as a disaster, right?

“And here I thought you were clever.” Usopp sighed, dropping his head into his hands for a few seconds. He didn’t say anything else while they were sitting there, and as they readied to leave the next day Sanji didn’t mention their odd conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usopp’s first meeting with Kaya, minus the Usopp Flair™: He crawled through that bush fence, got poked a bit, and climbed the tree outside her window. The massive gale was more of a stiff breeze, and he left out how he gave himself a bloody nose hitting her windowsill with his face.


	2. Chapter 2

Sanji leaned back against the mast, and tugged the blanket tighter around himself. They must be drifting towards an island in its local winter season, because the breeze was getting colder. If only Nami was awake, she could point them the right direction. As it was, they just had to hope they’d more or less stumble across an island. Maybe this was what it felt like to be Zoro, no idea what was ahead and no clue which turn would be the right one to make.

He snorted at the thought, and tilted his head back to look at the stars. The difference between their current predicament and Zoro’s everyday life was simple. Zoro couldn’t navigate his way down a straight hall, but they would be able to find their way to the next island if only they had a map, or the courage to remove the log pose from Nami’s wrist and attempt reading it. Absurdly, the thought reminded him of what Usopp had said back in Cocoyashi Village. It was true, Luffy was a bit of a walking disaster, but the day he’d met the rest of the Straw Hats had been on another level. Between Krieg and Mihawk, nobody had come out of that day unscathed.

He straightened up, then leaned forward slightly with wide eyes. Mihawk. That man, one of the seven shichibukai, had been a disaster in and of himself that day. Krieg had destroyed the Baratie, but Mihawk had destroyed two of Zoro’s three swords and nearly ended the marimo’s life. Sanji slumped forward, and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyelids. No, there was no way. He’d heard of soulmate disasters causing injury, but that scar was something which could easily have killed Zoro.

On the other hand, though, there was a superstition he remembered from North Blue which stated that the longer a delay there was between the meeting and the disaster, the worse it was destined to be. “Fuck.” he mumbled into his wrists.

“Something wrong, Sanji?”

He sat up quickly, and gave Vivi a wide smile. “Not at all, my darling. Are you cold? I’d be glad to share my blanket with you.”

She giggled, one hand lifting to cover her mouth. “Thank you, but you don’t have to stay. I’m next on watch.” she accepted the offered fabric, and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“I’m glad I could help.” Sanji beamed at her, and blew a kiss before starting down the rigging. There was more he would have said, but it was late and waking Nami at this hour with his praise for their actual literal princess would certainly be bad for her health. He entered the men’s bunks as quietly as he could, and was unsurprised to find a pair of dark eyes locking onto him as he shut the door. Zoro certainly was a light sleeper, and given all the naps he took during the day it was never a surprise to find him awake at odd hours of the night.

“Something on your mind?”

Sanji paused, one shoe halfway off. Zoro’s voice was grating during the day, but thick with sleep like this... no. He shook his head. The marimo was a shitty annoying asshole, and that was it. “Just what to make Nami dear and Vivi darling for breakfast.” he finished removing his first shoe, toed off the second, and collapsed into his hammock.

“Course.” Zoro mumbled, barely audible over the quiet shush-shush of waves on the hull. “Always about the ladies.”

Had it been anyone else, and had he not been on the very edge of sleep, Sanji would’ve thought that the swordsman sounded almost disappointed.


	3. Chapter 3

Sanji’s mind didn’t wander back to the topic of his soulmate until several months into his training on what he’d named Hell Island in his head. Once he’d gotten a sense for how to tell when an attack was imminent, the constant running became marginally less nerve-wracking. The end of his nicotine withdrawal hadn’t hurt either, though his hands still twitched towards the pocket with his lighter when it came time for a fight. But without every second of consciousness being devoted to hyper-vigilant attention to his surroundings, there was room for his mind to wander. And when half the local flora is shaped like hearts, love is inevitably something which comes to mind.

By the time the two years were up and all ninety nine recipes were in his hands, he’d come to a decision. The only problem was with finding a time to bring it up. He’d hoped to have a few minutes of privacy, which was why he’d volunteered to go find the marimo after placing his newest (surprisingly small) cookbook next to the others in the Sunny’s kitchen. Unfortunately, Zoro had somehow managed to get on the wrong goddamn ship, and then they’d had to spar because there was no way in hell he’d ever admit that Zoro’s training had been more intense than his, and then he was all but dragging _two_ directionally challenged idiots back to the Sunny so they could set sail.

The trip down to Fishman Island would’ve been his next choice, because the Sunny was a large ship and a private place to converse wasn’t particularly difficult to find, but after seeing how much lovlier Nami and Robin had grown in their time apart that backup plan had gone out the window. Even once they entered the New World, there wasn’t a single moment in which to pull the swordsman aside until they were leaving Punk Hazard. But then there was that Momonosuke brat and his father Kinemon, not to mention Caesar Clown and Trafalgar Law. Really, if his soulmate had to be a man why couldn’t it have been the Surgeon of Death? Law was moderately attractive, more polite than any of the men of the Straw Hats, and to top it off he was also from the North Blue. But no, it had to be _Zoro_.

Sanji groaned, and resisted the urge to slam his forehead into the spines of his cookbooks. The way things were shaping up, he wouldn’t have a moment to pull Zoro aside until they’d taken down Kaidou and dumped their passengers on Wano. He wasn’t sure he could wait that long, though. He still hated the moss-brained swordsman, but even he couldn’t deny that sometime during the crew’s two years apart, Zoro had gotten _hot_. Even in that ugly-as-sin robe he managed to look attractive. Sanji had a sneaking suspicion that said attractiveness had an awful lot to do with the obscene amount of bare chest said hideous robe revealed, but those thoughts could wait until he knew how Zoro felt about the possibility of them being soulmates.

He slumped forward, and pressed his head against familiar spines of varying textures. Hardcovers both with and without their glossy sleeves, paperbacks with cracked spines, even a handful bound in leather and one which had wood covers with nothing more than rough twine laces to hold the pages together.

“Trying for osmosis, shit-cook?”

Sanji startled, and spun around to see Zoro leaning against the near side of the peninsular bar. Had he really let his guard down so much he didn’t even notice the marimo come into the room? “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough.” Zoro smirked, the scar which covered his left eye crinkling and drawing attention to itself. Sanji’s hand lifted before he realized what he was doing, and his fingers brushed over the hardened flesh gently. Zoro didn’t even stiffen at the touch, but his expression did change to one of mild bemusement.

“How much did it hurt?” he asked after a moment, because surely a scar like this must have been caused by a painful injury.

Zoro shrugged. “No more than the rest of my training.”

Something in Sanji’s chest tightened at that, and his eyes dropped to the myriad scars which littered Zoro’s bare chest. Most of them hadn’t been there before they were split up and spent two years apart. “Usopp was wrong.” he chuckled, shaking his head. “You’re as much a walking disaster as Luffy.”

Zoro lifted a hand to poke Sanji in the middle of his forehead, pressing exactly where Enel had all the way back on Skypeia. “You’re one to talk.”

“At least I have a sense of direction.” Sanji retorted, but the insult had no bite to it.

“He told you the story about Kaya too?”

“Yeah.” Sanji leaned against the counter, cookbooks just behind his head. “And followed it up with some bullshit about not recognizing disasters.”

“You mean you didn’t realize it?” Zoro was smirking again, smug and irritating.

“In my defense.” Sanji raised a single finger and glared at the swordsman. “Soulmate disasters typically happen a few seconds after you meet, not hours.”

“You didn’t know.” Zoro laughed, quiet and startled but somehow more genuine than any other laugher he’d heard from the marimo before.

“How was I supposed t-” Zoro moved quickly, and Sanji froze mid-word. Zoro was, kissing him. It was a gentle thing, a brief press of lips, and then the swordsman was pulling away.

“Sorry, just wondered-”

Sanji grabbed the front of Zoro’s shirt, and pulled him back for a second kiss. So maybe he hadn’t gotten to say everything he meant to, and maybe this wasn’t exactly a private place to be making out, but if this was something destined then societal convention could go fuck itself. One of Zoro’s hands was sliding up his back, dragging slowly over his shoulders and up his neck until it came to rest in his hair.

They parted gasping, foreheads pressed together, and Sanji wondered somewhat blearily how he’d wound up pinning Zoro against the kitchen side of the bar. “Kiss me like that again.” Zoro whispered, voice hoarse and unexpectedly attractive all of a sudden. Sanji paused, blue eyes locked with brown so dark they appeared black, and he sensed more than saw Zoro’s tongue dart out to wet his lips. “Please.” the swordsman uttered the word like an actual request rather than a jeer, and Sanji pressed his whole body against the minutely taller man. The third kiss was deeper, almost desperate, and when they parted Sanji clutched at Zoro’s waist like it was a lifeline.

“I do still have a meal to make.” he breathed, voice rough and unsteady. His hands stayed locked in place though, and neither of them made any move to separate.

“Better get on that, then.” Zoro smiled, soft and sweet and completely disarming. “I don’t think Luffy’s had that talk yet, and I’d hate to be the one to give it to him.”

It took a second for Sanji to come up with which talk Zoro meant, but when it did click he snorted and gave the swordsman a gentle shove and straightened up. “As if you wouldn’t just pawn it off on Chopper.” he turned, and picked a cookbook at random. West Blue style seafood it was, then. Robin would be happy about that.

“I’m hurt.” Zoro mock pouted. “You really think I could put Chopper through that?”

“I think nobody on this ship wants to be the one to explain sex to Luffy.” Sanji punched in the code for the refrigerator door, and leaned in to get some ingredients. “You and I included.”

Zoro snorted, a far more familiar sound, and this time Sanji did sense him when he straightened up and got close. Strong arms wrapped around his waist, and he elbowed Zoro in the chest. “Later.”

“Later?” Zoro grinned.

“Yeah.” Sanji smiled, and opened the spice cabinet. “Later.”

Later was all the time in the world. Surely that would be enough to figure out where they were going from here.


End file.
